30th January 2025

30th January 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Genesis 2v15-17)


Message (Scott Woodburn)


Did you know that Adam had the ability to keep God’s commands? When the Lord commanded Adam that he wasn’t to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He wasn’t asking Adam to  do an impossible task. In today’s passage we see the birth of something called the Covenant of Works. The Westminster Confession describes it in this way “The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.”


Adam and those following him would enjoy everlasting life on the basis of Adam’s perfect and personal obedience. The first man was made with true holiness and the law of God written upon his heart. It was well within Adam’s ability to keep God’s law but instead our ancestor made the decision to walk his own path.


What was the result of Adam’s fall? Paul would speak this way in Romans 5 “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men…many died through one man's trespass…judgment following one trespass brought condemnation…because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man…one trespass led to condemnation for all men…by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners”


That’s desperately bleak reading isn't it? Sin, death, trespass, judgement, condemnation. Awful foreboding words that accurately describe the spiritual condition of the human race without Christ. What we need is another Adam. An Adam who obeys perfectly and personally. Interestingly, Paul described Adam as a type of the one to come (Romans 5v14). So who was the one to come? Jesus is His name.


Christ’s obedience was perfect and complete. It was both active and passive. The Lord is the second Adam, the true man and the one who replaces the bleak words above with grace, mercy, forgiveness, life and salvation. Adam heard God’s voice and choose to disobey. Christ heard God’s voice and said “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 6v38)


I am so thankful for the perfect and personal obedience of Christ. No hope without it. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC


Q101 What do we pray for in the first petition? In the first petition, which is, Hallowed be thy name,” we pray, that God would enable us, and others, to glorify him in all that whereby he maketh himself known, and that he would dispose all things to his own glory.
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